


a thousand kisses deep

by blindbatalex



Category: Football RPF
Genre: And angsty, M/M, and then there is a freaking thunderstorm outside, sigh, this is...experimental, what happens when i get stuck on a bus already in a sentimental mood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 17:21:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11362056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blindbatalex/pseuds/blindbatalex
Summary: For the tumblr prompt --the kiss that catches you both off guard, but says I miss you, I'm sorry and please love me again all at once without any words being spoken. (it is as angsty as it sounds you have been warned.)





	a thousand kisses deep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thesecretdetectivecollection](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesecretdetectivecollection/gifts).



> Title from the Leonard Cohen poem / song. The [song itself](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46cSksKVzzs) is beautiful ( _you live your life as if it's real, a thousand kisses deep_ ) but it's the [recitation of the poem](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdHl6NKr8PQ) that kills me every time.
> 
>  
> 
> _I loved you when you opened like a_  
>  Lily to the heat  
> You see I’m just another snowman  
> Standing in the rain and sleet  
> Who loved you with his frozen love  
> His second hand physique  
> With all he is, and all he was  
> A thousand kisses deep

Gary kisses you, his lips hungry and desperate, and all the things left unsaid crackle in the air like the sky before a thunderstorm.  
He kisses you and it doesn’t matter when and where.

You run into him in the parking lot of the studio –Gary isn’t returning to MNF next season though, is he, his face is already adorning the ads for Match of the Day. No matter. You run into him, then, in one of those charity events footballers attend. There is light music and expensive art that doesn’t mean much to you at all, and attendees gather in circles and make small talk, wearing perfectly tailored clothes and perfectly tailored smiles. Gary looks dashing in a three-piece suit, he always does. You don’t talk much –what would you say?--but you still catch him trying to guzzle down three mini pastries at once and it’s so _Gary_ you chuckle. At the end of the night, you thank the hosts and take your leave. You tell yourself it’s the alcohol that makes you feel so adrift. Out of place. Maybe it is, though you know better than that. 

You don’t expect Gary to follow you to your cab, but he does. He slides in after you with no word and presses himself against you. There is a look in his eyes you can’t quite read and you realize that he’s drunk too. Adrift. It’s ironic perhaps, what you are doing, _what he is doing_ , in the back seat of a cab, in public for all intents and purposes when you’d both blamed the media attention. Said the pressure was too much and it was career suicide and made yourself believe it as though your careers hadn’t ended the day you hung up your boots.

 

Or maybe it isn’t until years later. You are watching a movie at the movie theater and you laugh too loud. He whips his head from the row below yours, frown set, mouth ready to reprimand but it all melts away when he sees it’s you. It’s been years, there are new lines etched into his face, and you can still read the surprise there, the pain, as if it was your own. And it is in a way, your own. The seat next to him isn’t taken and the theater is mostly empty anyway (what are you doing in a midday showing of a movie on a Thursday, anyway?) You jump across over the seats to his row, bit of a cheeky demonstration of athletic ability, and look at him in the eye. Dare him to challenge your break of decorum. 

He doesn’t. 

Somewhere along the movie your hand brushes his and something moves inside you, against your will. You aren’t teenagers for God’s sake. And yet. 

 

Maybe though that’s not how it happens at all. Maybe you get out of the house right now and drive to Manchester, the wipers fighting a fight they already lost against the downpour beating on your windscreen. You get flowers on the way too, from that small shop near Gary’s house that keeps odd hours. White roses. Gary’s favorite. You don’t know if Gary will open the door. You don’t know what you’ll say if he does.

Gary does, indeed, open the door. 

You stand there unsure—your words disappear, drown under the longing and the regret. 

But it’s no matter. Because Gary looks at you and you can tell—you know that you don’t need the words; that he sees you. He steps into the rain and if you drop the flowers and run to meet him halfway, there is only the rain (and Gary) to stand witness.

It doesn’t matter how he kisses you. 

Maybe you run into each other on the street one night and he has grocery bags in his hand.

Maybe you are drunk and you text him—about something innocent like the weather, or knowing the two of you, football. You don’t expect him to text back. You don’t expect it to be that easy, after everything, to fall into old patterns and banter but you do and before long he’s asking you to come over. (Maybe you are in London and so is he and coming over is the easiest thing in the world, hop over into the elevator, press a button and you are there.) Doesn’t matter. 

Because really it’s the same every time. 

You can’t tell him just what he meant to you (you never could) or of the gaping hole he left behind that still bleeds around the edges. You can’t hold him and ask him to love you again. You wish you could, but you can’t.

Except, maybe in a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Normally I say comments and kudos are my lifeblood but this is too experimental and sad I think so. heh.
> 
> I'm on tumblr @blindbatalex if you want to come say hi.


End file.
